Let's Laugh About It! Using Humor to Address Complainers' Online Incivility

Beal, M (通讯作者),Grenoble Ecole Management, Mkt, Grenoble, France.
2023-2
This research investigates whether companies' use of humor is an effective strategy to address complainers' incivility on social media. Using three main experiments, the authors examine observers' evaluation of companies' humorous responses on social media in relation to the degree of incivility of the complaints. The authors find, first, that observers develop greater purchase intentions toward companies that use humor to respond to uncivil complaints. Drawing on benign violation theory, they explain that observers are less committed to uncivil complainers, which makes the use of humor more benign and thus more amusing. Second, they compare the effectiveness of humor with an accommodative recovery (e.g., apologies). When the complaint is civil, an accommodative recovery is a more effective strategy than affiliative humor. However, when the complaint is uncivil, affiliative humor is more interesting than an accommodative recovery because of greater engagement with the post (i.e., likes and shares) and similar purchase intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results are then discussed.
JOURNAL OF INTERACTIVE MARKETING
卷号:58|期号:1|页码:34-51
ISSN:1094-9968|收录类别:SSCI
语种
英语
来源机构
Grenoble Ecole Management; Universite de Montreal; HEC Montreal
被引频次(WOS)
0
被引频次(其他)
0
180天使用计数
14
2013以来使用计数
14
EISSN
1520-6653
出版年
2023-2
DOI
10.1177/10949968221129268
WOS学科分类
Business
学科领域
循证经济学
关键词
humor service recovery observers customer incivility social media